Operation Integrity Options

[amfab]

OK, well I had to have a thread title. I am calling it that because it will restore structural integrity to the car and I want to be able to say that the rust has been correctly repaired if I eventually sell the car, unlike the lack of integrity of the person who hid the rust to sell it.

Pictures below

The floor is a little shiny because there is still some mineral spirits on it from trying to get the tar off.

The open areas that you are seeing are after I wire brushed with knotted wire wheels on a grinder, then a carbide burr on a die grinder. While I will take some more off, what you see is getting close to good weldable metal.

First the longs:

The driver’s side is the worst. The bottom edges inside and out were full of holes, or very thin, so I cut the outside of the driver’s all the way off—except I haven’t got to the front under the door pillar yet.

I have cut out about 30 percent of the passenger’s side. The middle section is solid but I will replace it anyway. I started getting a little scared to take more out until I brace up the body.

The floor pan:

There are lots of sloppy welded patches and holes around the seams. The rear passenger’s and rear drivers quarters of the floor pan have been replaced with some plain steel—blue for some reason. The PO welded a solid bar on each side to mount the seat hinges. Sloppy, unground welds abound. There are some rust-through spots at the front of the pan that will need patching, but overall the pan in front of the cross member is solid.

Some patches in the lower firewall are solid.

Measuring diagonally, window frame to targa bar and straight back window frame to targa bar it is off no more than 1/8 inch. This changes depending upon doors open or closed or movement of the jack stands. The door gaps were never problems—maybe the driver’s side was a little wide. So it seems the car is pretty within spec and adjustable doorframe bars should be able to pull—or push—things to be good

Here is where I need advice. This is my plan, please give feedback:

1) Pull Wiring harness, speedometer cable and gas lines out of the center tunnel (What else is in there?) pull gas tank.


2) Pull doors and build adjustable bars to align doorframes

3) Continue to grind back to clean metal in the inside of the longs. Sandblast, then create internal angled patch pieces to repair the inner longitudinals from 18ga cold rolled. I am using michelko’s example see:
http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?s=&...st&p=219748

4) Cut off the majority of the inner rockers (The upper half or three quarters of the longs are very solid) and replace with inner rockers from Restoration Design.

5) Coat interiors of longs with Ospho then Eastwood frame coating

6) Patch any inner long parts to the area aft of the Restoration Design patch with 18ga cold rolled steel.

7) Install Brad Mayuer reinforcement kit over the longs

8) Cut rear floor quarters and cross member out

9) Weld in new rear floor panel and cross member, grinding out old welds and creating flanges from18ga where necessary—in the spots where there is no flange left in spots along the firewall and inner long

10) Remove and rebuild pedal cluster and create patches for small rust spots in the front of the footwells.

11) Sandblast interior and prime and paint.

12) Cut holes for front sway bar, sand blast and prime and paint bottom of gas tank area.

13) Install gas tank, new stainless gas lines and reinstall wiring harness.

Please give any feedback regarding my plan

[amfab]

More Picts

[GeorgeRud]

You'll have some welding to do, but Restoration Design has all the panels you need to cut out and replace the rusted sections. When done, you'll have a great, solid car with no surprises.

Be sure to document what you've de and be sure to properly support the door gaps while welding on the longs. Plenty threads by folks that didn't do that and ended up with doors that wouldn't close.

Enjoy your project in good health!

[cary]

Adding to George's suggestion.

Do you have door braces installed ?

I see the jack stands and square tubing under the floor pan. What about way out on each end ?

[amfab]

Adding to George's suggestion.

Do you have door braces installed ?

I see the jack stands and square tubing under the floor pan. What about way out on each end ?

Haven't made the braces yet. I discovered this all just a few days ago and the metal supply place hasn't been open. I should be able to pick up the stock tomorrow.

I currently have jack stands under the front of the torsion bars and the rear suspension tubes.
I had them under the rear donut thingies, but I was cutting so much metal away there I got nervous
I also felt like a little too much weight was hanging off the back and this way the bars—one I make and install them—will have less stress on them.
There are other bars supporting the middle for safety and to help keep things straight.

-Andrew

[amfab]

What do you guys think about welding a place under the dash for the bottom of the door brace? This way I can leave the doors on to keep an eye on the gaps. I can grind it off after the longs are done.

(See pict)

-Andrew

[Andyrew]

At this point you have so little structural integrity from the longs its not a bad idea to be able to check the gaps as you go along so you can adjust the body as necessary.

Also, Check out this thread. Adjustability in your braces now will come in handy later.

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...62220&st=60

[amfab]

Thanks for the link Andrew there is some very relevant stuff for me on there.

I leveled the car and made the braces today. After wrenching it so the driver’s side pushes out a little and the passenger’s pulls a little. I ended up with good measurements and the door gaps in the pictures.

The windshield to targa bar measurement is dead on both sides.
The cross measurement from targa bar to opposite windshield frame differs by a little under 1/8 inch. Does this seem reasonable?

The door gaps seem pretty good, but the doors don’t seem to sit in the jambs that straight. Fro example the passenger's door is about 1mm too low in the rear. I think I can fix these later. Is shimming the hinges something that is done?

I just want to make sure the car is straight before I start rebuilding the longs.

I will try Matthew’s idea with the string line tomorrow. Unfortunately, there is some Bondo in the bottom of some of the panels, so I do not know how accurate it will be.

-Andrew

[mbseto]

I wanted to do braces that would allow putting the doors on, but I'm replacing the entire long and didn't think it would be practical. Now that I'm close to welding that long in, I would really like to be able to place the door in its spot!

[tygaboy]

I wanted to do braces that would allow putting the doors on, but I'm replacing the entire long and didn't think it would be practical. Now that I'm close to welding that long in, I would really like to be able to place the door in its spot!

Mr Foley at Tangerine Racing makes a door brace kit that allows for the doors to be on the car. I jury rigged up my own before they were available.
WAAAAY worth if for the ability to check door gap as you go.

[trojanhorsepower]

If you are interested in the opinion of someone that has BTDT (you already got a few), I would suggest that door braces alone are not enough. I would build some sort of jig (if I had it to do over) that attaches to the suspension points. Before starting any cutting or welding. Then strip and blast the entire car. That will let you really see where the problems are (and not just the obvious ones). This will give you the option of making it a parts car before you spend more money. All you will have really lost is labor and the cost of blasting. In my opinion that is better. Just an opinion.

[amfab]

I agree it is better to build a jig and do a full restoration but I do not have the time to do it all at once. The car is not perfect, but the trunks are good and solid and the body is decent. So it is Longs, then floor pan, then the car goes back together to drive. Current plan: Driver's long is disassembled and Osphoed (I believe that is a verb, at least around here).
Now I am going to use michelko’s strategy:
http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?s=&...st&p=217612
and fab new pieces for the rear of the longs and double it up as the factory and michelko did. Then I will run a layer of “L” shaped 18 ga all the way forward to cover rust abscesses and stiffen the inner long. Then comes the inner rocker from RD.
The Brad Mayeur kit will go over it.

The car is now supported at the front of the torsion bar tubes, the tubes coming off the rear suspension and with a bar going across the bottom of the pan on two jack stands. In addition, I have one adjustable stand under the transmission taking a little stress off the back.
The bar is level; the tops of the longs inside the car are level to less than .8mm.
I have measured these dimensions:
-Between roll bar and windshield flange
-Between hinge and door lock pillars
-Diagonal distance across roof opening
-Diagonal distance across passenger compartment
These are all really close to factory specs, by close I mean, all within a less than 1mm.
The passenger’s door lines up well. All gaps are pretty even and about 3.5–4.5mm.
The driver’s side however has bigger gaps, 3.5 to over 5.6mm in one spot up near the cowl.
With all the measurements lining up, I could not figure out the 5.6mm issue. After screwing with the door and confirming measurements and level several times, I made a paper template of the back of the front fender up by the cowl. The paper covered the fender from the welting at the hood gap to the welting at the doorjamb down about 8 inches of the upper front door gap where the large gap is. I then flipped the paper and placed it over the passenger’s side.
It showed 1mm to 1.5mm of fender at the exact spot the driver’s side has too large a gap. It appears that the last paint job may have had someone get a little too aggressive with a sander or grinder and took a little too much off. I decided to keep the car straight and live with the annoying extra 1.5mm gap (see picture). Ill fix it down the road as I get into learning to paint.

[mbseto]

Is that hydraulic bearing weight? I've found that they will relax over time and if you are taking measurements, some of them may change as the weight shifts. I was always impressed that Michelko was able to get a straight frame using jack stands and especially with moving it around during the process. He must have had a tape measure in his hand constantly.

[amfab]

Is that hydraulic bearing weight? I've found that they will relax over time and if you are taking measurements, some of them may change as the weight shifts. I was always impressed that Michelko was able to get a straight frame using jack stands and especially with moving it around during the process. He must have had a tape measure in his hand constantly.

The hydraulic is a backup. It is holding up a 2x2x4ft steel tube snugged up against the bottom as a safety measure, and in case I have to lean or put any pressure on the car, like when I am taking doors on or off—which I have done four times already to check gaps.

I have already taken the measurements several times without the extra support and they are staying stable as I have removed metal, but i will continue as I work. I have some wooden dowels cut to a few of the measurements so I can quickly check. I am down to pretty much everything I will remove from this side now, aside from some edge cleanup here and there. I will be checking again and will probably even put the door back on right before the first weld though.

I just got notice that $647 dollars of Restoration-Design parts just shipped this morning (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[amfab]

OK making patches. Can you guys le me know if this looks like a decent plan?
I haven't welded anything in yet. I have created this piece that replaces the bottom rear of the drivers long. I will put a second layer over this that extends over the butt weld ar the rear. Maybe another 3 inches.

About halfway toward the front, the bottom of the long is OK. It just has holes along the bottom inner edge. So I am planning not to remove the bottom of the long—I will just double up on the existing. I will bend it and let it go up pretty high—I haven't determined how high yet—to reinforce the E-Brake area.

[mbseto]

You're planning a reinforcement kit on the outside too, right? Looks like a good start.

[amfab]

You're planning a reinforcement kit on the outside too, right? Looks like a good start.

Yes, the Brad Mayeur kit. I am also thinking of doing a 16 gauge piece inside across the bottom of the firewall, and inside the e-brake well.

[Andyrew]

Looks good. If your doing it on the inside then maybe consider adding a couple of bends to create a hump going the length of the long. Thats what creates strength, not just layers.

[amfab]

OK, so based on Andyrew's comments I went out and bought a bead roller...
Its a cheap HF thing that required me half the day to reinforce, but it seems to work well now. It just requires a lot of thinking ahead.

So here is where I am now. Progress is very slow because i only have about 16 hours on a weekend to work.

I had to do some welding to make the inner-long e-brake recess reinforcement section.

Im gonna work on a layer with the factory style indentations to lay over the back part of the long now. It will go up into the long a little further to overlap.

See the graphic of what I am trying to do and the photo for how it is actually coming out. The latest patch that goes of over the e-brake will be perforated for rosettes. Any advice on spacing and size?

More feedback is always welcome

[Montreal914]

To give you an idea, the holes for the plug welds on the inner reinforcement kit from maddog are 3" apart length wise and 1 1/2" height wise.
I think they are 5/16" diameter (or 3/8").
Keep up the good work (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smash.gif)